My Life In Books - The Stories That Inspired Me
This is a list of the books that inspired me and left a lasting impression in my life. What would your life in books look like?
1.
I'm sure most kids know the story of the Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. But did you know there was a prequel? I was given a box set of this series when I was 8 years old and living in Ballina NSW. I read them all, but Book One became my favourite. The pools of water in the woods between the worlds is an image firmly etched into my mind. From then on I was always a sucker for an origin-story.
2.
This is the first adult novel I read as a child. I was 11 years old and living in Culburra NSW. I remember marvelling at how King could make tedious activities over long periods of time completely riveting. The tension building of fashioning a rope from a daily thread of a napkin was so meticulously executed it has stayed with me for life. There is beauty and life in the tiniest of details.
3.
When I was 18 years old I moved out of home (Newcastle) to a rented bed-sitter in Killara (Sydney) to attend uni at UTS in the city. So began a decade long voyage of train travel. I bought this queer classic from a book-stand at Central Station and loved it to pieces. It was the smartest thing I had ever read. It was an author with a strong and outlandish voice and a cynical point of view about relationships, art, and appearances.
4.
Down and out at 24, I was living in a series of terrible sharehouses, and socialising primarily with alcoholics and druggies. I read this before Oprah's fraud controversy and thought Frey absolutely nailed it with the grittiness of addiction. It was one of the first depictions of substance-abuse I'd read that acknowledged the psychological component to needing to be wasted. He named the emotional turmoil The Fury, but it rings true of any mental illness. To answer Frey's critics: All addicts are unreliable narrators, and all alcoholics exaggerate and forget.
5.
During my first major bout of depression, I was unemployed for three years (age 26-28) and holed up at my parents' retirement house in Tasmania. I was separated by distance from everyone I had a bond with in the queer community. My dad has an extensive library of first-edition hard-backs that he collects. This is the first novel I was able to complete during that time. Depression makes it difficult to concentrate. I loved the movie and was pleasantly surprised by how much more explicit the queer relationships were in the book.
6.
This is the story of a middle-aged alcoholic woman. I read it when I was 33 and coming to terms with the health effects of my own alcoholism, and transitioning to sobriety. Alcohol is such a different story for women, and it is rarely addressed with any nuance. This book cemented by love for the unreliable narrator and the shifting divergence between truth and facts.
7.
The perks of being a book reviewer for Salty Popcorn: at 35 I discovered my all-time favourite short story collection as a random selection from a local publishers catalogue. And it was by an Australian author not so different from me. This collection is set in the uncanny valley of parallel worlds, so many markers of our current pop-culture but with something a little askew. This book marked by decision to only buy paperbacks that are short story collections - which I mostly stick to - and to collect novels on my Kindle e-reader. Such is the minimalism of a nomadic life. And it let me know that being having a short attention span is OK. That speculative fiction is a delicate art. And that being a short story author is something to aspire to.
1.
I'm sure most kids know the story of the Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. But did you know there was a prequel? I was given a box set of this series when I was 8 years old and living in Ballina NSW. I read them all, but Book One became my favourite. The pools of water in the woods between the worlds is an image firmly etched into my mind. From then on I was always a sucker for an origin-story.
2.
This is the first adult novel I read as a child. I was 11 years old and living in Culburra NSW. I remember marvelling at how King could make tedious activities over long periods of time completely riveting. The tension building of fashioning a rope from a daily thread of a napkin was so meticulously executed it has stayed with me for life. There is beauty and life in the tiniest of details.
3.
When I was 18 years old I moved out of home (Newcastle) to a rented bed-sitter in Killara (Sydney) to attend uni at UTS in the city. So began a decade long voyage of train travel. I bought this queer classic from a book-stand at Central Station and loved it to pieces. It was the smartest thing I had ever read. It was an author with a strong and outlandish voice and a cynical point of view about relationships, art, and appearances.
4.
Down and out at 24, I was living in a series of terrible sharehouses, and socialising primarily with alcoholics and druggies. I read this before Oprah's fraud controversy and thought Frey absolutely nailed it with the grittiness of addiction. It was one of the first depictions of substance-abuse I'd read that acknowledged the psychological component to needing to be wasted. He named the emotional turmoil The Fury, but it rings true of any mental illness. To answer Frey's critics: All addicts are unreliable narrators, and all alcoholics exaggerate and forget.
5.
During my first major bout of depression, I was unemployed for three years (age 26-28) and holed up at my parents' retirement house in Tasmania. I was separated by distance from everyone I had a bond with in the queer community. My dad has an extensive library of first-edition hard-backs that he collects. This is the first novel I was able to complete during that time. Depression makes it difficult to concentrate. I loved the movie and was pleasantly surprised by how much more explicit the queer relationships were in the book.
6.
This is the story of a middle-aged alcoholic woman. I read it when I was 33 and coming to terms with the health effects of my own alcoholism, and transitioning to sobriety. Alcohol is such a different story for women, and it is rarely addressed with any nuance. This book cemented by love for the unreliable narrator and the shifting divergence between truth and facts.
7.
The perks of being a book reviewer for Salty Popcorn: at 35 I discovered my all-time favourite short story collection as a random selection from a local publishers catalogue. And it was by an Australian author not so different from me. This collection is set in the uncanny valley of parallel worlds, so many markers of our current pop-culture but with something a little askew. This book marked by decision to only buy paperbacks that are short story collections - which I mostly stick to - and to collect novels on my Kindle e-reader. Such is the minimalism of a nomadic life. And it let me know that being having a short attention span is OK. That speculative fiction is a delicate art. And that being a short story author is something to aspire to.
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